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Maybe the dog ate Patrick's answers

By Peter Lucas

Updated:
12/04/2012 09:37:32 AM EST

What happened?

That is the question raised by a Patrick administration official over the drug-testing lab scandal that has rocked the state.

The words came from Health and Human Services Secretary JudyAnn Bixby during a Statehouse hearing last week over how a state drug-lab chemist could get away with tampering with drug evidence for so long without being detected. "We have to ask the question. What happened? And how could one chemist have caused so much damage?" the hapless Bixby asked.

And though Bixby, whose secretariat oversaw the Hinton drug lab, raised the question, she had no answer. The lab was where rogue chemist Annie Dookhan played fast and loose for years with drug sample evidence.

Nor does Gov. Deval Patrick have an answer, even as he now begins the lame-duck phase of his second and final four-year term. Patrick will not seek re-election in 2014, but will head for lucrative private employment in the international biomedical field.

What happened? Part of the answer is that the people Patrick appointed to oversee the lab did not do their jobs. There was an administrative and management breakdown in the Department of Public Health, which oversaw the lab, and also when Patrick was too busy traveling the country campaigning for Barack Obama or selling his books to do his job.

But it is not the only case of mismanagement in the Patrick administration.

Patrick will leave a lot of political debris behind when he goes.

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Not only will hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of drug convictions be thrown out, and convicts released, as a result of the drug testing scandal under his watch, the financial cost will rock the state.

The Committee for Public Counsel, the public-defender agency, estimates that it will immediately need $62.5 million to deal with Dookhan-related litigation for some 35,000 criminal cases. It projected that it could need a whopping $332 million if every drug test performed by the lab is called into question.

That is even more money than the cash-strapped MBTA is seeking in yet another bailout making its way up on Beacon Hill.

What happened? The same question could be asked about the lack of administrative oversight regarding the drug compounding companies which, underinspected and undersupervised by the state, have caused the deaths of some 34 people -- as well as injuries to hundreds of others -- from tainted steroids shipped around the country.

The drug-compounding scandal, where a lack of administrative management and oversight led to a disaster, represents another black eye to the reputation of the commonwealth under Patrick. Was there no one in charge?

What happened? Don't ask, because you will not get a clear answer from Patrick. The best you will get is something like this: It's not my fault, it happened before I got here, nobody told me, I was not here that day, we are looking into it, I am appointing a committee, I'll get back to you, it will not happen again, the cat got out of the house, I was sick that day, I think I was on vacation, I will get to the bottom of it, the dog threw up.

If you are inclined to laugh at the dog reference, just check out the "dog-ate-my-homework" excuse Patrick gave when asked who hired the unqualified political operative Sheila Burgess -- the scofflaw of driving infractions fame -- to be director of highway safety at $87,000 a year. Burgess' hiring in 2007 came upon the recommendation to Patrick by U.S. Rep. James McGovern and was a clear patronage appointment.

But strangely enough, neither Patrick nor anyone else seems to have hired her. She just showed up and went to work. Amazing.

Asked about it on the Jim Braude and Margery Eagan WTKK radio program last Wednesday, Patrick said he wanted to find out how she got the job but he could not find the related documents.

"We've tried to get to the bottom of it," Patrick said. "I think that was in the early days of the administration. We can't even find the documents because in the normal course (of events) those documents are gone, are destroyed." Really?

Patrick added that even though there was "no paper trail" of her hiring, he was still interested in finding out how she ended up with the job. "I'm not saying we're not trying to find out the answer to this question," Patrick added.

If he really wants to find out maybe he should ask Burgess. He might find out that it was him.

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